Being a Parenting Coach is one path to freedom of time and better-earning power if you are committed to success as a helping professional. This option strengthens your character and fulfills your motivation and moral and social values. Learning coaching skills and ethics offers rewarding experiences. Or, learning consultant planning sharpens your mind and lights the fire of curiosity again.

As Richard Branson states, you just have to say yes to a novel opportunity.

“If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!” ― Richard Branson

Learning parent coaching skills can be life-changing, and not just for the families with whom you interact, but also for yourself. You might feel that parent coaching is your calling, so you help others in your parenting and friendship circles. When your satisfaction grows, the calling pulls you even further into the possibility of working at home for yourself. Think of the possibilities!

[tweetshareinline tweet="The wonder of being pulled toward your journey is unparalleled. The idea of coaching stays in your mind and you mull it over." username="parent_coach"]

Learning Enhances Earning Power

A good teacher or mentor is a life-long learner. Learning adds value to

Your temperament and values motivate you to seek opportunities to use your natural skills like listening. You are a helper like a coach, a counselor, a teacher, a nurturer. You look for new challenges like coaching that broaden your knowledge and expand your skill set. By temperament, you are often called to teach, share, support, negotiate, and help.

Bringing your natural temperament traits into a profession like coaching engages your heart, which any job must do. If your heart is not engaged, you lose interest. If you are not seeing progress and achievements in your sphere of life, then consider parent coaching.

The Sense of Giving Back

The most satisfying act for a nurturer is knowing you have contributed to society in an effective way. Even better is knowing that the changes you have made have a long-term effect. By helping families and parents to strengthen their bonds, you offer them better connection and communication skills which can become their best habits.

You are assisting parents in raising their children as emotionally healthy individuals with ethical and moral values. There can’t be anything more satisfying and rewarding than knowing you help influence three generations of parents and children. However, the coaching skills are very different from giving advice.

The Client-Coach Relationship

As a mentor and coach, you know your clients on a personal, intimate level. They will share their emotional struggles and problems with you.

You are wired to be an empathetic listener who can understand and feel what the client is experiencing.

This requires developing a strong emotional bond with the customers.

You learn to build a relationship to help your clients heal, grow, and refine their focus and actions. This is missing in self-help parenting books and resources. That is what gives coaches an edge.

Taking Multiple Roles as a Consultant, Coach, or Mentor

As a parent coach, you are not just a counselor; you are a mentor who listens, teaches, educates, supports and transforms. Parent coaching skills can be defined as a set of excellent listening, coaching, and counseling skills. It is a universal skill set that will help you throughout your professional and personal endeavors in every walk of life.

However, you need to acquire the skills set required to become a good parent coach and reap the real value of being a mentor. You can start now by enrolling in Academy for Coaching Parents.

“Play is a uniquely adaptive act, not subordinate to some other adaptive act; but with a special function of its own in human experience.”

Johan Huizinga

Families with children with behavioral disorders...

...may not remember how to play, have fun, and spend peaceful times with each other. Rather, energy is spent in repeating relationships.

When I step in to coach this type of family, who have forgotten, the concept of joy and family time is often painfully absent. Rather, focus is shaped amidst the turmoil and enormous energy spent caring for a child with difficult behaviors.

As parents practice new skills to calm their internal landscapes as well as the environments of their homes, they must also re-learn how to have fun. A vital part of healing the family is reintroducing fun, connective activities, joy and humor into the schedule. A new module in the Coaching Families With Special Needs In Behavioral Regulation provides practical information to help coaches and parents co-create a plan for repairing relationships through family fun.

The other day, when I was in town, I witnessed a shocking event. A funeral procession was slowly making its way down Main Street.. The hearse appeared to have engine trouble at the top of the hill. Suddenly, the back doors of the hearse burst open, and the coffin flew out the back of the vehicle! A few people screamed as the coffin skidded down the street and crashed into a pharmacy at the bottom of the hill. Remarkably, it came to a stop right in front of the pharmacist’s desk. In a flash the lid popped open, and the guy inside asked the pharmacist, “Doctor, doctor! Can you give me something to stop this awful coffin?”

NOTE: What just happened in your brain and body?

Some significant processes occurred in your neurophysiology that have the power to alter not only the way you feel, but also your perception and outlook on past, present, and future situations.

How does the joke relate to self-regulation and repairing family relationships?

[ctt template="5" link="ueYc6" via="yes" ]Laughter IS the best medicine. No, really! It’s true. We had a decent laugh over the joke I just told, and each of you are still benefiting from its effects. @parent_coach[/ctt]

Laughter and humor cause the brain to release ‘feel-good’ endorphins that flood bodies and minds with well-being. Laughter causes us to breathe deeper and fills our lungs and bodies with stress busting oxygen. The wonderful combination of endorphins and oxygen culminates in a feeling of happiness.

Studies conducted by the Mayo Clinic as recently as 2013, show that laughter and smiling relieves depression, anxiety, and helps the body to produce natural painkillers. Additionally, positive self-affirming thoughts, release neuropeptides that improve our immune systems and help us fight stress. This strikes at the heart of our topic.

Neuropeptides make it easier for us to cope in difficult situations. Here are the chemical reactions we WANT to occur more regularly in the brains and bodies of disorganized and dysregulated families and children. This is just the prescription families need to coax them back to emotional balance and relationship; only, they do not know if you are a parenting coach, who arrives to model and teach this concept.

[ctt template="5" link="bza94" via="yes" ]Now, here is the challenge. How do you coach the long-suffering, overwhelmed parents to initiate a plan to have fun while they are still suffering the after effects of secondary trauma and high stress? @parent_coach[/ctt]

Here are some of the challenges you face.

Some parents do not believe they will ever have fun or smile again.

Others ache to smile light-heartedly and long to regain some of their previous carefree lives.

Some parents have convinced themselves that a strict schedule where the child accounts for every minute of the day is the only sane way to keep their child on the straight and narrow; therefore, they do not have time for fun.

Others are resentful and angry because of the extreme difficulties a behavioral child brings to the family dynamic, resulting in radical changes in lifestyle.

Parents, brothers and sisters have learned to live compartmentalized and disjointed lives in the chaos and conflict that sometimes ensues when living with a child with disruptive behaviors.

All of these caregivers may believe the simple pleasures of life are long lost. It is likely that none of them know how to break current ingrained negative patterns of interacting and bring family together again in playful ways.

Been There Too!

Referring to my personal experience, I recall feeling old, tired, depleted, and played out. (No pun intended!) However, the words of George Bernard Shaw are appropriate here:, “We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.”

We know that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and this is true for parents and kids alike. The ramifications of a life without the emotional glue of experiencing happiness, love and joyful interactions with those persons who mean the most to us are profoundly limiting.

So, how do we draw our hard pressed and pressured caregivers out of their old paradigms and beliefs and into the lighter side of life? Here is the four step secret formula to help families begin to have fun together, even while dark clouds linger.

Parenting the whole child implies that we honor our children’s wholeness while we dissect and discuss the parts of the whole—physical body, mind, emotions and spirit. It may indeed be paradoxical, but it’s our way of understanding how the parts contribute to the whole and our job if we work with parents, families, and children.

We consider our children’s wholeness when we:

Bear in mind the emotional and mental factors that contribute to strep throat.

Look to a biochemical problem associated with a child’s temper

Consider the negative self-talk and thoughts that can float around in the head of a depressed teen.

Regard childhood patterns from a holistic perspective. These can include a child who falls down all the time, one who has allergies, one who is shy and sensitive, one who doesn’t want to be touched, and so on. We want to help, but do we help their biochemistry, their behavior or their spirit?

Think about how children spend their time, and if their activities are balanced between stimulation and quiet.

Bundles of Energy

The foundation of whole-child parenting is understanding that our children are bundles of energy in the form of thoughts, physical activity, emotional expression and spirit. Rather than thinking about managing our children, think about managing their energy.

The energy of the body needs food, touch, air and water. The energy of the emotions needs positive input like optimism, smiles and support. The energy of thought needs inspiration and imagination, or it gets bored. The energy of the spirit needs connection, faith, compassion and quiet. It needs calm moments of awareness.

Most of us know these things and have our own intuitive ways of mothering and fathering our children. In fact, the joy of parenting the whole child is discovering how much you already know and do. The ease of whole-child parenting is that when one avenue doesn’t work, there is always another way. For example, because we know that the nature of emotional energy can be chaotic, we can find several ways to structure and channel positive emotional energy with our child. We might follow schedules, share meals, read books or see a heart-warming movie.

A Soul Living in a Child’s Body

Thinking of a child as an “energy bundle” helps us take our parenting less personally when a child screams, “I hate you.” What we want to take to heart is that this soul is living with us in a child’s body. We are responsible for helping this child to develop in the best, most fulfilling way possible.

Parenting is really about educating the mind and body so our children are happy, successful and healthy in body and soul. Working with the mind-body connection is the foundation for parenting the whole child.

If you read this post till the end, you probably are kind of person who wants to help folks live to their maximum potential. Your hunger for having an influence on people forced you to read this article and much more that you already read. It’s just the right time to take a step further and become a certified parent coach and give your purpose a meaning. Have a look at our coaching certification and decide which one suits your talents best..

Can you see the one attribute critical for personal and professional success? What makes coaches so credible with clients and successful in business? Charisma, experience, and expertise are at the top of the list.

It's true. In every action your take in business or life, your mindset is the determining factor which influences your success. Your coaching mindset and plans require the same foundation, a fresh viewpoint about people, money, and solutions.

Here are examples of how a stressed or unconscious mindset could influence your decisions.

1. You think that helping everybody would be great for business. The solution would be to define your audience by temperament, income level, and initial problems you could solve. By defining a narrow path for your ideal client, you earn more and have more.

2. You set a sliding scale in good-hearted effort to turn away no one that you could help. While deserving and lovely, these clients are less than your ideal when it comes to their ability to pay. Can you meet your budget with a lower-end scale? Yes, possibly with a group program or class. Then, would this client enter into private coaching? Did they value your work and you?

Before you can realize your dreams of four-or-five-figure clients, you have internal work to upgrade. Perhaps these changes in the coaching mindset help you be open minded, focused, compassionate, playful or personal?

If you are a caring, heart-oriented supporter, your coaching strengths are:

Being able to re-frame other's doubts,
Listening to one's story,
Modeling the best conversation for the positive parenting with your client's kids.

If you are a charismatic influencer, you inspire those who admire you because

Your nature is gregarious
You enjoy people, and they appreciate your friendliness
You are an excellent example of creativity in action and brainstorming.

If you are an achiever-type coach, your coaching could challenge others

To tackle the project they've ignored
To commit to the exercise routine they need
To manage finances better
To plan the product launch sooner than later

If you are the kind of coach who strategizes, your primary strength is solving people's problems This makes you an excellent consultant. In coaching, you can ask the right questions to help a client strategize:

What is the result you want?
What is the first step you would take to get there?
Can you outline the process?
What resources will you need?

In coaching, you are often the cheerleader for your clients, and gratitude will be a quality that you want your clients to have.

In coaching, you expend energy being with your client. If you find yourself complaining or fatigued, what will you do to better care for you?

Growing Your Coaching Mindset Confidence

Here's something else top-end coaches have in common: confidence. They believe in what they do. They believe in their ability to help others achieve the same thing. They walk on stage or join a webinar filled with the knowledge that what they are about to say will change the lives of those who are listening. That is confidence!!

When you feel confident, you radiate confidence.
Just like how the person you're talking to on the phone can hear a smile in your voice, your potential clients can sense your mindset. If your mindset is not up to par with those you admire and mimic, you'll struggle to make the sale. Work on your attitude and confidence levels, and watch your income soar.

Emotional resilienceenables you to bounce back after difficult experiences. Fortunately, this is a skill that you can develop to get through stressful times with greater ease.

Here are some of the benefits of becoming more emotionally resilient and a few strategies for developing this very helpful skill.

The Benefits of Becoming More Emotionally Resilient

Experience greater happiness. Adversity is to be expected but you can control your emotional reaction. By putting the best face on things, you'll see the opportunities for learning and growth that come with challenging situations. A positive attitude will also help you recover from disappointments more quickly

.Make progress towards your life goals. Complications will arise throughout your life. Being flexible makes it easier to accept and surmount the obstacles that arise in your path. For example, if one scholarship fails to come through, explore other options for financing your college education.

Strengthen your relationships. People are naturally drawn to happy people. You're likely to have more harmonious relationships if you can keep up your spirits. By contrast, depression often makes others feel like withdrawing.

Boost your self-esteem. Becoming more adaptable helps you accomplish more. In turn, those accomplishments and healthy relationships make you feel more confident.

Act responsibly. Under pressure, you may feel tempted to get angry or hurt or act out. Emotional resilience helps you to keep your composure and makes you less prone to saying something that you might regret.

Cultivating a calm mind helps your immune system keep you healthy. Studies show that managing stress can even help you maintain your cognitive functions as you age.

Methods for Becoming More Emotionally Resilient

Know your purpose in life. It's a big endeavor, but discovering your purpose in life is fundamental to your ability to navigate challenges. A mission motivates you.

Set realistic goals and make specific plans. Some things are beyond your control, but smart planning can enhance your stability. Set goals you can achieve and break them down into easy steps.

Be aware of your emotions. If you can be mindful of what you're feeling, you can give yourself permission to evaluate the situation before reacting. Moreover, deep breathing provides some time to see a constructive solution before getting angry, hurt, or being irrational.

Practice patience and persistence. Make a commitment to yourself to see things through even when difficulties arise. For example, if you get declined after one job interview, transfer your energies to the next opportunity.

Slow down. Sometimes you get more done by slowing down. Lack of sleep or perpetual multi-tasking can cause stress and irritating tension. Give yourself a break to refresh your brain and your body.

Act happy. Just trying to appear happier can help you lift your mood after a setback. Treat yourself to a funny movie or call a friend who helps you laugh.

Learn to ask for help. Make it easier for your loved ones to support you. Practice asking for help in a respectful manner while being specific about what you need.

Be generous. The more you give to others, the more likely they are to reciprocate in your time of need and the better you'll feel about yourself.

Emotional resilience is a powerful asset for accomplishing more in life.

About Dr. Caron Goode

Dr. Caron Goode is the founder and managing director of the Academy. Caron helps nurturers work from home in a financially successful business. She is the author of over a three dozen books in parenting, coaching, business and marketing, and self-improvement.